


Personal Rule Two

by Rohnoc



Category: Original Work
Genre: Poetry, bit moody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:49:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rohnoc/pseuds/Rohnoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It sometimes feels like something's clawing at the inside of my sternum when we talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personal Rule Two

I don't complain  
Not really  
Not in the way I could if I tried  
Not in the lashing out or withdrawing way  
Because I'm 'a good kid'  
So I bite it back  
Keep it behind my teeth and inside my head

I've gotten good at that

Practice from school where critics could rip apart pieces of your projects  
And you would smile and reply  
Thanking them even as you wanted to shout or cry or tear at yourself till they understood  
(They must know what you're thinking no matter how you act, they went through it too)

But I can't tell if you understand  
About how some of that practice is from the loud years  
From the knowing that you think it's all been wrong for so long  
That we sometimes feel more like people rattling around together than people who belong together  
But I do and bite it back

Sometimes we have conversations where I think you get it  
Where I speak as a third party about how it feels and you respond in kind  
It never comes to much  
You badger and loop us through the same conversations of things we do not want to hear  
You know this and say we should be stronger to face it, to take your words seriously and just move ahead  
I try to take it in the sprit of encouragement that you mean it in  
But it's hard to sometimes with every pushed button of things that hurt to reminded of in a cycle of days

But I don't complain  
Not really  
Not to you  
Even when you say that having an easier time growing up has made me lazy  
When you compare where I am to where my classmates are in life  
When you compare how determined you were at my age  
When so many of the people you hear about become case studies in where I seem to have gone wrong  
When a decision I made in what was thought to my interests is still reviewed as a 'what if' and found lacking

And I agree with you  
That I am lacking  
That I am waiting for a hand up when I shouldn't be  
That this agreement has lead to a voice in the back of my head that mutters in the dark when I feel like breaking apart  
'What's wrong with you? Can't you so anything right for once? You have it easier than so many and you're wasting it. For what. To feel sorry for yourself? Don't be so stupid'  
So it stays down, because I'm a 'good kid'  
It keeps within my ribs. Behind the solid press of sternum. Inside a small bottle of sloshing dark.

I hope it holds  
But I won't complain.


End file.
